by
Maria S. Kardaun

May 18, 2014

It is well known that in Plato’s utopian ideal state there is no room for free artistic expression: artists are mistrusted and art works heavily censored. Less known is that, once they are properly selected and purified, art works are particularly valued by Plato. However, Plato completely disapproves of a certain category of art, which he defines as ‘mimetic’. ‘Mimetic art’ is a priori disqualified by him as morally bad, misleading and dangerous. It is therefore categorically forbidden in the ideal state. In practice, Plato identifies ‘mimetic art’ chiefly with Greek tragedy. We will go into a Jungian explanation of why this is the case. I hope to show that psychologically speaking Plato’s ideal state is an unstable construction. It is built on the repression of unconscious powers that may erupt any time. Tragedy is threatening to this construction because it undermines the unrealistic Platonic conception of man as an autonomous, rational being.

article

The
Philosopher and the Beast: Plato’s Fear of Tragedy

Maria S. Kardaun

Maastricht University, Faculty of
Arts and Social Sciences, Department of Literature

In the second half of the fourteenth century, a
few decades before the reintroduction of the complete text of the
Platonic dialogue Republic in Western Europe (in Latin), the
Italian humanist and poet Giovanni Boccaccio could still safely claim
that Plato’s attack on poets and poetry was only meant to expel
some admittedly obnoxious comic poets, and that he certainly had not
intended to banish great literary artists such as Homer or Hesiod
from his ideal city.1
However, when the first translation of the Republic appeared
in 1402, it was clear for all to read that it was indeed artists of
the caliber of Homer and Hesiod who were under attack.

The re-availability of the text of the Republic
did not resolve the dissatisfaction with Plato’s views on
literature. No less than in the fourteenth century, it is still hard
to accept that perhaps the greatest literary philosopher ever to
exist would order the removal of Homer, “the most poetic of poets
and the first of tragedians,”2
from his commonwealth. This is all the more strange since every so
often Homer or other poets are invoked in the dialogues in support of
a philosophical argumentation. Apparently Plato sees no harm at all
in using literary works to his own advantage.3
Yet banishing all “pleasure-indulging literature, whether in the
form of epic or drama”4
is what he explicitly and repeatedly recommends, and there can be no
doubt that he means it.

To be sure, Platonic literary theory is a
complicated matter. Small wonder that there have been
misunderstandings. Some decades ago it was not unusual for scholars
to say that Plato’s treatises on poets and poetry were confused.5
However, the philosophical difficulties of Platonic aesthetics are
hardly insurmountable. With a little effort they can be overcome. In
the second section of this paper I will summarize Plato’s views on
the function and the essence of art, including literature. As will be
made clear, these views form a logically coherent and perfectly
comprehensible theory that fits well with Plato’s overall
philosophy.

The real problem with Plato’s view then is not
so much a matter of logic, but should be located elsewhere. In the
third and final section I will formulate some depth-psychological
observations pertaining to Plato’s position on art and artists,
because, even though its philosophical coherence and relevance are
much less problematic than is generally thought, Platonic art theory
does have some characteristics that may be called eccentric and
require additional, psychological explanation. Thus I do not agree
with the general tendency in classical philology to object to
psychological analysis with regard to Plato and Platonism on the
grounds that this type of research “will hardly satisfy anyone who
is convinced of Plato’s having a well-balanced personality”.6
To this typical remark many replies are possible, of which the most
important is perhaps that depth-psychological explanations are not
necessarily at variance with the value and dignity of their object,
be this a theory or a person. Secondly, at least from a common-sense
point of view it cannot be denied that Platonic philosophy, including
Platonic art theory with its rigorous censorship and suppression of
free speech, is somewhat unbalanced, if not weird. While
acknowledging that psychological explanations should of course never
serve as an excuse to neglect accurate research of what Plato
attempts to convey philosophically, I think it is worthwhile to look
into some of the more peculiar aspects of his philosophy from a
Jungian perspective. In our investigation we will pay special
attention to the question why it is that Plato turns so vehemently
against dramatic art forms.

II – Platonic
Art Theory in a Nutshell

In what follows only a brief and simplified
account of Platonic art theory can be presented.7
Incidentally, I find this ancient art theory rather brilliant, but
this by no means implies that I share Plato’s opinion concerning
the desirability of art censorship. Two things have to be
distinguished: on the one hand there is Plato’s analysis of what
art essentially is – to my mind this analysis is
constructive and worthwhile –, and on the other there is the policy
on art which Plato recommends. Anyone who cares even a little bit
about democracy will find this policy unacceptable.

A common, though inaccurate,8
reading of Plato’s views on art is the following. According to
Plato – it is said – art, including literature, has a low
ontological status. It is mere mimesis, ‘trivial imitation’ that
is. Being mimesis, art is at two removes from True Reality (the
transcendent world of the eternal Forms), or in other words, art is
just a copy of a copy, and therefore it is necessarily untrue and
cannot but have a bad moral effect on its public.

One of the disadvantages of this still popular
reading is that it depicts Platonic art theory as rather naively
inconsistent, since Plato definitely does not always speak with
disapproval about art. On many occasions he makes it clear that works
of art can be ‘true’9
and benefit society.10
Also it is quite evident that Plato acknowledges that literature and
art can play a positive and important role in education.11
Naturally we do not wish to have Plato contradicting himself in
claiming on the one hand that art is necessarily untrue and bad for
compelling, ontological reasons, merely in virtue of its being
mimetic, and on the other that some works of art can nevertheless be
true and worthwhile, in spite of their being mimetic. That would be
rather silly.

The problem in the older readings is connected
closely with a misunderstanding of the key term mimesis, as if
this Greek word meant ‘(trivial) imitation’. But linguistic
research12
has shown that in Plato’s oeuvre – as in ancient Greek literature
in general – the focal meaning of ‘mimesis’ is not ‘imitation’
but ‘representation’.13
Therefore, though it is true that Plato regards art, including
literature, as essentially mimetic and also that he holds at least
some works of art in contempt as being nothing but a copy of a copy,
it cannot be their mimetic quality in itself that makes these works
of art mere imitation.

To understand Platonic art theory it is imperative
to consider Plato’s sophisticated use of the concept of mimesis
(‘representation’). In the Republic Plato tells us that
all poetry is mimetic – meaning that the essence of literature
consists in its representing something in a non-discursive,
immediate, picture-like way –,14
but that we nonetheless have to distinguish between decent, narrative
poetry,15
which is simply mimetic, and offensive, mimetic poetry,16
which is extra mimetic or mimetic in a double sense: when compared to
plain narration mimetic poetry contains an extra pictorial element.
Narrative poetry may occasionally succeed in faithfully representing
the eternal Forms, but mimetic poetry never does; instead of
representing the Forms themselves, mimetic poetry represents only
copies of the Forms in an inessential way. In other words, it is at
two removes from True Reality and therefore nothing but imitation.17

This last category, mimetic poetry, has to do with
direct speech, or more generally with impersonating or acting. In
practice, when Plato speaks of ‘mimetic poetry’, it is chiefly
drama he seems to have in mind (and to a lesser extent also the Iliad
and the Odyssey, particularly those parts in which Homer uses
direct speech).18
Plato warns against mimetic art in general19
and drama in particular, and wants to have it forbidden in his ideal
state.

Let me try to explain how the Platonic system
works by giving an example.20
The doctrine of Forms is well known: there is only one paradigmatic
Form ‘Virtue’, but there are many concrete examples – or to use
the technical term, instances – of Virtue, consisting in for
example virtuous acts. According to Plato his much admired teacher
Socrates is himself an instance of the eternal Form ‘Virtue’.
Now, if you are an artist, you may represent Socrates through a hymn,
praising his virtuous qualities as they really are. In that case you
are representing Virtue itself through its instance Socrates, and in
that case Plato thinks your poem is true and acceptable, and probably
even useful in society. But if you think you can allow yourself the
liberty of representing Socrates on stage, with a beard and with
individual idiosyncrasies, then Plato considers your art to be at two
removes from Reality, since in that case you are representing
Socrates in an inessential way, namely in his lowest appearance and
only insofar as he is not an instance of Virtue. Thus, your art does
not represent the eternal Form ‘Virtue’; it is merely a poor
imitation of one of the many instances of Virtue.

To recapitulate: all poetry is mimetic, but some
poetic products are more mimetic than others. So-called ‘mimetic
poetry’ is at two removes from True Reality and is therefore
categorically forbidden in Plato’s ideal state. In practice,
mimetic poetry is identified by Plato mainly with drama and (parts
of) epic.

This seems understandable enough. However, to make
things more complicated, even if artists happen to produce the very
best of art works, art works that are direct and faithful copies of
True Reality, even then these works must be strictly censored in
Plato’s ideal state (mind: not categorically forbidden, but still
put under severe restrictions). For example, even if Hesiod’s story
about what Cronos did to his father Uranos – namely that Cronos
castrated him – were true, this would be something to keep
concealed from the public.21
For what reason?

The answer is best illustrated by a famous passage
from the Laws. In this dialogue the Athenian philosopher, who
leads the discussion and who is generally regarded to act as Plato’s
mouthpiece, informs us

“that when a poet takes his seat on the
Muse’s tripod, his judgement takes leave of him; like a fountain he
allows to flow out freely whatever comes in, and his art being
mimesis, he must often contradict his own utterances when
representing men of opposite dispositions, without knowing whether
these or the other things of what he has said are true. But this is
not what the legislator should do with regard to the law, giving two
accounts of one thing; he must always give one account of one thing.”
(Laws 719 c3-d3, translation taken from A. E. Taylor, with
some adaptations by MK.)

It has often been suggested that Plato simply had
something against artists and that he is just being unpleasant to
them again here, accusing them of inconsistency for no particular
reason; but if you read this short passage in its context and keep in
mind that ‘mimesis’ means ‘representation’, it makes perfect
sense. The major part of the Laws is – unsurprisingly –
about law-giving. Plato is explaining here what kind of laws the
philosopher-legislator should issue. Well, the legislator should not
issue laws in the way in which a poet produces poems: laws should be
plain and unambiguous, so that they cannot be misunderstood, whereas
literary products apparently possess puzzling qualities which
according to Plato makes them unfit for uncensored distribution.

At first sight this may seem somewhat surprising,
since it is obvious from the context of the Laws that we are
dealing here with the very best kind of poetry, namely poetry that is
at only one remove from True Reality and a faithful copy of the
Forms. According to Plato gods and goddesses are without deceit, so
we can be positive that the Muse reveals nothing but the Truth. Also
we have here an artist who does not attempt to think all by himself,
but who “like a fountain allows to flow out freely whatever comes
in” – meaning: who does not spoil the divine gift of the Muse
with uncalled-for changes or speculative additions of his own. In
other words, the artist in question definitely passes the divine
message on to society unaltered; his art being mimesis, he simply
represents Truth as revealed to him by the Muse, and does not make
selections or adjustments of any kind.22

Nonetheless, this kind of divine Truth-revealing
has to be checked by a philosophical censor. This is not because the
artistic product in the passage cited above is at two removes from
(or otherwise a misrepresentation of) Reality, since this is not the
case, but because of a lack of proper receptiveness on the part of
the public, of you and me, so to speak. In Plato’s opinion society
cannot cope with Truth. The one thing Plato is afraid of is that the
divine Truth will be profaned by vulgarization and misunderstanding.

In Plato’s eyes artists are unable to determine
what should and what should not be made public. Even insofar as they
might be willing to check themselves, their lack of knowledge makes
them unfit for this responsible task. Their job is to be inspired by
the Muse and to deliver what they are told as purely as possible.
Thus they are often compelled to contradict themselves when they
depict various answers to one and the same question. This is because,
as Plato points out a few lines further down, to depict a particular
line of conduct means recommending it, for example a poet might
depict a prodigal funeral at one time, and a miserly one at another,
thus giving us contradictory advice about what we should spend on
such occasions.23
As for the poet, he has no idea which one of his contradictory
suggestions is the right one. Though at times, when he is under
divine inspiration, he receives rays of insight directly from above,
these insights are not integrated in any comprehensive vision of
Truth. Therefore they remain fragmentary and unreliable, both to the
poet himself – who apart from his isolated gift is as ignorant as
anyone else24
– and to the average audience. It is important to notice that the
contradictions connected with inspired poetry exist only on the
concrete level; on the part of the Muse there can be no inconsistency
at all. The prodigal and the miserly funeral may both be correct in
their respective contexts – in fact they must be, if they are the
Muse’s work –, but it requires knowledge to recognise the higher
Truth behind the superficially contradictory details of poetic
compositions.25

To the average, non-philosophical public all this
is confusing, misleading and at times alarming, because they lack the
means to see what is behind the superficial details of literary
works. They tend to draw false conclusions from literature, as a
result of which they are at risk to behave inappropriately.
Therefore, it is Plato’s conviction, the philosopher should
intervene and act as literary censor, instruct the citizens about
what to read and hear, and save them from any possible harmful,
misleading, unbearable, and premature insights they might gain from
reading the ‘wrong’ literary works.

III – Some
Jungian Observations

So far, so good. We have here an art theory that –
at least in its abstract form – is interesting and coherent.

That is to say: to my mind the Platonic answer to
the question as to what art essentially is, is satisfactory enough. I
think, for instance, that it is a characteristic of (real) art that
it reveals a kind of higher truth, as Plato suggests (a truth that
can hardly be grasped intellectually, however).26
Instead of ‘higher truth’ we could perhaps say that art
represents not concrete, everyday reality as such, but a collective
psychic reality behind the concrete that is somehow meaningful to us.
In this respect I find persuasive the Platonic image of the artist
sitting on the tripod of the Muse: art is only to a small extent
created by the conscious personality of the artist. In order to
produce something artistically worthwhile, the artist has to be
inspired by ‘the Muse’. In a manner of speaking one could say
that ‘the Muse’ is the real creator of works of art, or, in
depth-psychological terminology, that art is basically rooted in and
derived from the collective unconscious. And undeniably, insofar as
artistic products happen to be only trivial imitations of outward
reality, their raison d’être is questionable. (In practice
it may not always be easy to judge, though, whether a certain work of
art is artistically worthwhile or just something trivial, especially
since art works tend to show their depth only after some time.)

We have already mentioned certain rules of
Platonic art censorship. However offensive, they certainly make sense
as an indispensable means to control Plato’s utopian society: in
view of Plato’s overall system it is clear that in his society art
should be put under severe restrictions.

We have only to recall how the Platonic system is
built up. High up in the Platonic hierarchy of being we find True
Reality, namely the transcendent domain of the Forms. The Forms are
beautiful, perfect, immaterial, unchanging, eternal entities. In the
Timaeus they are said to belong to the masculine gender,
though this may be no more than a metaphor. According to Plato,
achieving an intellectual vision of the eternal Forms is the highest
goal of human life. Only very few philosophers may hope to attain
this happy state of mystical experience. Next comes reasoning or the
use of logos; reasoning is highly esteemed by Plato, but takes
second rank, since it is a reflective and therefore an indirect way
of recognizing Truth, though eventually it may lead to direct vision.
Then, in the third place, we find the emotions. These are to be
avoided. Needless to say that they are regarded as feminine.27
And finally, in the lowest of all places, sense perception is
located. Sense perception is even more base than the emotions: it is
animal-like.

The object of both the emotions and the senses is
defined by Plato as non-being, namely as the absence of Reality,
whereas – as you may remember – the object of intellectual vision
and reasoning is True Reality or Being with a capital B.

To cut the story short: what Platonism is directed
at – something which is especially manifest in the Republic
–, is establishing a kind of intellectual fascism, both politically
(in the state) and psychologically (in the psyche of the individual).
Very briefly summarized: logos should reign at all costs, and
emotions should be repressed whenever they are likely to come into
conflict with reason.

It may be helpful to illustrate this with some
examples of Platonic practice. The Socrates figure, who plays a major
role in the Platonic dialogues, is always very proud of his (real or
supposed?) independence from emotion. In the Phaedo we read
that a few hours before his death Socrates is visited by his wife,
the notorious Xanthippe, who has come to the prison to take leave of
him. She has brought their little son with her (their youngest;
according to some sources two older sons have died previously) and
she is weeping, and so on. Instead of saying goodbye to her, Socrates
treats her like an object, ordering over her head that she be taken
home. From the Platonic perspective the cold and imperturbable
attitude with which Socrates always meets his wife’s emotional
claims, whether they are justified or not, is highly satisfactory. We
find a similar lack of normal human feeling in the unconfirmed story
of Socrates’s response to the death of his son Sophroniscos. When
Socrates is told that his son has died, he does not see any reason to
interrupt his teaching. Only after his teaching is done, he declares
with calm discipline that the time has come “to do justice to
Sophroniscos as the law demands.”28
And lastly a telling story about Plato himself may be mentioned,
namely that he apparently once decided not to punish a slave, however
deserved the punishment was, merely because he detected a feeling of
anger in himself: apparently he did not want to run the risk of
letting emotion have the slightest influence on his behaviour.29

In view of all this, it is not surprising that
Plato should be suspicious of free artistic expression. The normal
compensatory quality of art in the Platonic context automatically
becomes a subversive one. Platonism is repressive to such a degree
that it cannot afford to allow for any alternative views of life.

Plato’s ambition to eliminate any compensatory
influences goes astonishingly far: not only does Plato recommend that
artistic expression be strictly controlled, he even wants to regulate
the dream life of the citizens in his ideal state. Plato believes
that by concentrating on worthy and beautiful thoughts before going
to sleep one is able to avoid “dream visions that are unlawful”.30
It is imperative to make this effort, since otherwise something
terrible may happen: as you fall asleep, the beast in you awakens. It
shakes its filthy head and will do its utmost to gratify its
instincts. Since it knows no shame, Plato warns, it will do anything,
for example sleep with the mother.31
Plato seems to hint here at the Oedipus motif, possibly more
specifically at Sophocles’s Oedipus rex, a stage play that
must have been well known to him. In Rep. III he tells us the
same kind of things about actors: they know no shame, stop at nothing
and will represent literally anything on stage.

This brings us to our last point: at the beginning
of this paper the question was raised why it is that Platonic
philosophy turns so vehemently against dramatic poetry.

Officially, having to do with direct speech,
dramatic poetry is supposed to be at two removes from True Reality.
It is Plato’s conviction that drama must be rejected categorically
because it is mere imitation: its twice mimetic character makes it
fundamentally trivial and untrue.

We have to ask ourselves, however, why Plato
should develop a literary theory that is specifically targeted
against drama and disqualifies it a priori as trivial and
untrue. An answer in terms of ‘direct speech’ or ‘acting’
will not do, since there is no reason why it should be impossible to
represent Truth in direct speech or on stage.32
On the contrary, from any viewpoint except Plato’s, drama is very
instructive: it shows us important aspects of the condition
humaine from an artistic perspective, thus compensating our
normal, everyday view of things. But as we have seen it is an
intrinsic feature of Platonism that it is allergic to alternative
points of view. Plato has no use for compensatory activities in his
ideal state. He regards them as dangerously subversive. And indeed,
within the Platonic system this subversiveness applies especially to
drama. Dramatic insights cannot be accepted as true by Plato since
they fundamentally undermine his philosophy. Drama offers exactly
those insights into human life in general and Greek culture in
particular which Plato wants to repress.

This may be illustrated by some examples from
Greek tragedy. In Aeschylus’s famous play Agamemnon from the
year 458 BCE a certain form of rationalistic decision-making which
seems to have been gaining popularity in fifth-century Greece and
which Platonic philosophy strongly favours, is unmistakably depicted
as morally and practically wrong. King Agamemnon is forced by powers
beyond his control to choose between either forsaking his duty as the
leader of a military expedition or killing his own daughter. He
decides to pursue his military duties and sacrifices his daughter. In
Platonism predicaments such as Agamemnon’s do not present specific
moral problems. Genuine conflicts of duty cannot exist, since
rationally speaking there is always a best solution: in a situation
where one line of conduct appears to be more reasonable than another
one should make sure to choose the most reasonable one, and in those
cases where two or more solutions are equally good (or bad), one may
choose any of these and still be morally perfect, because logically
speaking one could not have done better. Reasonable agents will
always recognize what is the best thing for them to do. Once they
have rationally decided what is best, they will automatically act
accordingly, and lead a life free of moral guilt. Thus, virtue is a
matter of knowledge, moral problems are to be solved through reason,
and guilt can always be avoided. As long as agents do their best to
reason properly, they cannot possibly sin. At the very most they may
be mistaken about something, but of course that is not something for
which they can be blamed.

As Martha C. Nussbaum has pointed out,33
Aeschylus’s tragedy Agamemnon shows us exactly the opposite:
sometimes an unavoidable choice between two morally bad possibilities
may impose itself. Even if agents are wise enough to choose the
lesser evil, they remain responsible for the wrong that they commit
through their neglect of the competing ethical claim. If they fail to
accept this responsibility, they will be punished. According to the
implicit logic of the play, the tragic protagonist Agamemnon is to
blame not so much for the choice that he makes – rationally
speaking the death of just one person is of course less bad than the
possible destruction of a whole army –, but for the strange lack of
anguish with which he performs his horrible sacrifice. He does not
feel guilt in a situation where he apparently should. He seems not to
experience the agonizing conflict imposed on him. In order not to
suffer he successfully represses his former affection. He is even
overcome by a kind of eagerness to collaborate with evil: once he has
decided to kill his daughter, he treats her more harshly than the
situation requires. It is this neurotic lack of feeling that makes
him arrogant and insensitive to later dangers, as the course of
events in the play show us. From the moment Agamemnon gives in to the
cold frenzy that creeps up on him while sacrificing his own child he
slowly dehumanizes, and this leads in a subtle way to his eventual
destruction. It is obvious that Plato would not like such a play.

My second example is Medea by Euripides
(431 BCE). Euripides was notorious – later became famous – for
his realistic female figures. Indeed, Medea is a play about
feminine psychology, but as I see it, it depicts not the
psychological structure of Greek women but of the Greek anima.
When Jason declares about Medea’s killing her (and his) own
children that “no Greek woman would ever do such a thing”
(1339-40), he is certainly right. Medea is not a woman. She is the
granddaughter of Helios and a supernatural being: she is the exotic,
hot-tempered and dangerous anima of the Greek male,
represented by the Jason figure. From Euripides’s artistic point of
view, Jason has a very narrow-minded, cold, plain, and greedy
personality. He uses Medea to achieve things through witchcraft, and
rejects her quite logically – he thinks – once he can no longer
profit from her. It is well known how the story ends: eventually the
ambitious Greek hero is destroyed by his foreign anima and her
witchcraft. Obviously this is not a representation of reality that
Plato would embrace either.

Finally Sophocles’s play Oedipus rex is
worth mentioning (written in the 420s BCE). Plato refers to this
play, and to the Oedipus motif in general, more than once. Its theme
can be summarized as follows: the irrational cannot be controlled,
and it is dangerous to try too hard to free oneself from numinous
constraints, since this can easily lead to opposite results.
Oedipus’s problem is that he has a bad relationship with the
unconscious. He is always impatient, irritated, refuses to listen to
his fellow human beings or to the gods. When the oracle at Delphi
tells him that he will kill his father and wed his mother he simply
‘decides’ to do otherwise. He pedantically calls himself the
child of the goddess Tyche: he makes his own fate, he thinks.

Oedipus rex offers the distressing insight
that seemingly rational, valiant and independent men are no less
vulnerable than others to the traps and dangers of unconscious
complexes. Superficially, Oedipus seems to live a life according to
his own conscious plans, but actually he behaves according to
extremely primitive archetypal patterns. The Oedipus motif contains a
warning. Oedipus is the prototype of modern man who more than is
actually justified thinks that he has freed himself of tradition, the
gods and the irrational in general. His unjustified trust in his own
paternal, rational powers makes him regress into a state of extreme
dependence on the mother complex. Just as the oracle predicted, he
kills his father and lives with his mother. Thus he tragically
achieves the opposite of that at which his rationalistic ambition was
driving. In the world depicted by Sophocles in his Oedipus rex
the traditional, capricious gods of Greek mythology and the
irrational have the last word. That must be a gloomy picture to
Plato, who set himself the task of establishing a utopian state based
on rationality alone.34

An earlier
version of this article has been published in 1997: Why Plato
Banished the Artist. Some Jungian Observations. In Frederico Pereira
(ed.), Literature and Psychoanalysis. Proceedings of the
Thirteenth International Conference on Literature and Psychoanalysis.
Lisbon: Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, pp. 197-204.

8These
untenable and rather shallow older views on Platonic art theory,
that are unfortunately still found in many (art historical)
handbooks, are deserted by the majority of scholars in the field of
ancient philosophy and aesthetics. See Palumbo 2008, pp. 9-153; De
Rijk 22008 [2006], pp. 310-311; De Rijk 2002a, p. 22; De
Rijk 2002b, p. 135; Rowe 2002, p. 300; Petersen 2000, pp. 19-35;
Kardaun 2000 and 1993; Koller 1980 and 1954; and many others.

9Mind:
‘true’ not in the sense that they faithfully copy concrete
reality, but in the sense that they represent something of the
eternal Forms. E.g. μῦθοι– ‘literary stories’ – are
always fictional, but this does not necessarily prevent them from
being true in a higher sense. Cf. Rep. II 377 ff, where Plato
distinguishes between fiction which is ‘true’ and fiction which
is not, and where he suggests that ‘untrue’ fictional
representations of the gods are to be rejected under any
circumstances, whereas ‘true’ fictional representations may
sometimes turn out to be acceptable. A nice example of traditional
literary fiction that is explicitly declared to be ‘true’ by
Plato is found in Laws III 680-682. And of course we may
safely assume that Plato’s many myths of his own, in which the
gods always appear as the source of good things only – such as the
myth of Er (Rep. X 614-621) or Plato’s reconstruction of
what happened before our time in the golden days of Cronos (Plt.
269-274; Laws IV 713 f.) –, convey a higher kind of truth
as well, even though they cannot be said to be literally true. For
the relation between Platonic myth and higher truth, see also Zeller
1859, pp. 361-363.

10E.g.
Ion 533-6; Meno 99; Phdr. 244-5; Laws
III 682. Even in the notoriously anti-poetic third book of the
Republic Plato gives us an example of literary fiction that
benefits society. He brings up an old myth from the traditional
poetic repertoire which he strongly wishes to be universally
believed in the ideal state, namely that all men are actually born
from Mother Earth; they are to honour their mother, that is their
native country, and to consider themselves as brothers. To some men,
however, the god who made them added gold, whereas for the creation
of others he used less precious kinds of metal; hence the state’s
natural hierarchy (Rep. III 414 b8 – 415 c7).

11In
Rep. II 376 e2 – III 402 a4 Plato discusses what kinds of
literature and music are likely to produce good warriors. He
approaches his subject ex negativo in that he talks mainly
about his reasons for prohibiting the greater part of existing
works. At the same time, however, he makes it crystal clear that
literature and music, once they are properly purged, are of
paramount importance to the development and maintenance of the ideal
state: art works are necessary tools to mould young,
pre-philosophical souls and make them receptive of Platonic
philosophy.

13Mind
that there is no English equivalent of general application for the
Greek word μίμησιϛ. Therefore, depending on the context,
different renderings may be needed, varying from ‘representing’
to ‘reflecting’, ‘expressing’, ‘mirroring’, ‘copying’
and ‘imitating’. However, it is important to keep in mind that
the ancient Greek word μίμησιϛ does not have any intrinsic
connotation of triviality or superficiality. Insofar as μίμησιϛ
can be rendered by ‘(trivial) imitation’ at all this is brought
about by the context. To give an example: when a bad flute-player
wants to be mistaken for a good one, he “should try to imitate
(μιμητέον) good players in the outward appearances of their
art” (Xenophon Mem. I,VII 2). This is one of the relatively
rare occasions where the translation ‘imitate’ is appropriate,
but plainly the connotation of superficiality is brought about not
by the word μιμητέον, but by the explicitly mentioned
“outward appearances of the art” (τὰ ἔξω τῆϛ τέχνηϛ).

14Note
that pictures can be pictures in words. Cf. Soph. 234 c6,
where Plato speaks of εἴδωλα λεγόμενα, translated by
L. M. de Rijk as ‘images in speech’ (De Rijk 1986, p. 82).
Incidentally, Aristotle categorizes literature (and art in general)
in very much the same way as Plato, namely as an image-producing
profession. According to Aristotle literature resembles painting in
that literature, just like painting, is pictorial in the sense that
it does not argue logically to make a point, but presents images
(Poetics 25.1460 b7-9).

15With
narrative poetry (ἄνευ μιμήσεωϛ ἁπλῆ διήγησιϛ,
Rep. III 394 a7-b1) Plato means poetry that does not contain
direct speech and is hence not mimetic in form. Some lines further
in the Republic we are told that narrative poetry tends to
have a decent subject-matter, whereas poetry which conveys its
messages either wholly (drama) or partly (epic) through mimesis
practically always has a morally bad subject-matter (Rep. III
394e – 398b). The combination of direct speech with a largely bad
content makes this so-called ‘mimetic poetry’ offensive and
dangerous. Mimetic poetry is therefore categorically forbidden in
Plato’s ideal state, whereas narrative poetry is only heavily
censored (Rep. X 595 a – 608b).

17In
most of the older readings of the Republic (Havelock, Diès,
Verdenius, Copleston, Else, and others) the distinction between
poetry in general and mimetic poetry in particular is neglected or
misunderstood. As far as I can see, in modern times W.K.C. Guthrie
was the first to recognize the crucial difference between literary
works that are at one remove from Reality, since they represent the
Forms directly, and literary works that are at two removes from
Reality, since they only represent the concreta in their concrete
ontic status (Guthrie 1975, pp. 545-8). A nice detail is that long
before Guthrie the Neo-Platonist Proclus seems to have already
noticed the conspicuous fact that Plato does not categorically
condemn literature as such, but only a special sub-category, namely
so-called ‘mimetic literature’, i.e. literature that is even
more mimetic than literature normally is; for details of this
reference, see Hub 2009. The suggestion that Plato uses the
expression ‘mimetic poetry’ in a tautological way is no option
at all, see Kardaun 2000, pp. 144-158 and Kardaun 1993, pp. 63-65.

18For
reasons that are too complicated to explain here Plato sees epic
poetry as a mixed genre, both in form and in content. Epic is not
altogether bad. However, because it is not altogether good either,
Homer too is categorized as ‘mimetic’ and banned from the ideal
city, unless he can prove that the city needs his poetry (Rep.
X 607c). The banishment of Homer is not at variance with Plato’s
many positive references to the Iliad and the Odyssey:
being a philosopher who has seen the light Plato is of course
capable of discerning between ‘good’ epic verse lines and ‘bad’
ones. The thing is that on the whole Homer does not give an
accurate picture of eternal Truth.

19Of
course, there are more mimetic arts than just mimetic poetry, but in
this paper we confine ourselves to poetry. By and large, Plato
treats all the arts in the same, logical way. For Plato’s attitude
towards music, see Kardaun 2000, pp. 149-150.

20This
example is constructed by analogy to Soph. 267 a5-e2, where
Plato treats the difference between the true philosopher (ὁ σοϕόϛ)
and the would-be philosopher (ὁ σοϕιστήϛ). To appear wise,
the latter performs an act: he misleadingly imitates the external
behaviour of the former.

22That
(real) poetry originates directly from the Muse is an often
recurring theme in Plato’s work; see Apology 22 b-c, Io
534 b-c, Meno 99, Phaedrus 244-5. Of course it is also
a perfectly common view in Antiquity.

24See
Apol. 22 a-c. This is not to say that Plato demands that
artists should possess knowledge or even right beliefs. (This is a
widespread misapprehension: e.g. Guthrie 61989 [1975],
pp. 547 f.; Else 1986, pp. 44-6.) Plato draws a clear line between
the inspiration of the poet and of the philosopher (Phdr.
244a – 252c). Poets should produce poetry, and philosophers
philosophy, and neither should try to overstep the line between them
(Phdr. 245a combined with Phd. 61b and Rep. II
378 e – 379a). It would not only be useless, but also superfluous
to demand a philosophical attitude from poets: precisely to make
clear that poetry is independent from any form of τέχνη, god
(i.e. the particular god involved) made the very worst of all poets
compose perhaps the most beautiful paean ever (Ion 534 d-e).
Doubtless Plato opines that – good, non-mimetic – poets should
be given the opportunity to follow their inspiration, since
otherwise the ideal city will have no poetry of value at all. Only,
in case they create something that is not suitable for everybody’s
ears, it is the philosopher’s responsibility to see to it that it
is not made public (Rep. II 377 b-c; Laws IX 858 d –
859a).

25Cf.
Plt. 269b ff. where it is stated that many different poetical
stories about our mythological past contain fragments of Truth.
However, it takes a philosopher to reconstruct their fundamental
unity.

26The
insights conveyed through art works are, I think, not primarily of
an intellectual nature, as this type of insight is for the most part
neither empirically nor logically testable and therefore not an
object of the sciences. Instead of ‘higher truth’ it is perhaps
better to speak of ‘meaningfulness’.

27Cf.
Phaedo 117 d-e, where Socrates reproves one of his young
admirers for his womanish emotions: weeping at someone’s death,
Socrates’s own in this case, is to be regarded as a feminine,
immature and unhelpful response.

28These
and other examples of Socrates’s attitude towards his own and
other people’s emotions are discussed more extensively by M.-L.
von Franz in the context of her analysis of two reported dreams of
Socrates (von Franz 1985).

29Antiquity
offers us several different sources for this story: see Zeller 1859,
p. 318 n. 2.

31Considering
how it is treated, it is not surprising that Plato’s poor beast is
somewhat out of control. Using the same metaphor Jung remarks: “Too
much of the animal distorts the civilized man, too much civilization
makes sick animals” (Jung 1953, p. 28).

32Of
course, the fact that in drama the plots of mythical stories are not
simply narrated but represented on stage makes it particularly
difficult for the audience to resist being influenced. Any audience
will be much more involved in what happens before their eyes than
when the same story is told in indirect speech. However, Plato’s
disapproval of drama cannot originate exclusively from its
directness. Cf. what Plato decrees about music. Like drama, music
influences its audience in an irrational and very direct manner.
Therefore music without words (ἄνευ λόγου ῥυθμόϛ τε
καὶ ἁρμονία) is not allowed in Plato’s city, since one
never knows what it will arouse in its listeners. However, music
that harmoniously accompanies a valuable text is particularly
esteemed. In other words, its direct influence, once it is
controlled and recognized as positive, makes music an even more
valuable element in the Platonic education system than if it were
less direct (Rep. III 398-403 and IV 424; Laws II
653-654 and 669-670). The same goes for Plato’s use of the
dramatic form in his own dialogues. As he is convinced of conveying
Truth with a capital T his own use of direct speech is of course no
problem to him at all. In fact, the dramatic presentation helps him
to be even more persuasive than he would have been without this
extra tool.

33Nussbaum
1986, pp. 25-50. For a different view on this subject, see Williams
1993, pp. 132-136.

34I
am grateful to Prof. Dr. J.W. McAllister and to Dr. Joke Spruyt for
their advice about the English.